Under The Sand
by Zauberer S
Summary: Roy Mustang writes letters he knows he will never send. MustangHawkeye, preseries, mangaverse


spoilers: vague references to chapter 57.

written for the lj community 30kisses, theme "letter"

xxx

The letters pile up like leaves at the end of autumn, but Roy hates the easy metaphors, has always suspected of poetry in verse.

He has always written letters; he has always liked the faded white (he used to wonder, how could it be, that white would be a faded colours, when so many regarded it as no colour at all) of the page, the smell of ink on his fingers, days after the letter had been finished.

Roy writes in letter the things that never were, that never will be; things that had no room in the common language, things that had no place on the tip of his tongue.

_what happened there_ reads the first letter he writes her after Ishval, the first letter after sunlight burnt at their corneas, after all the sand-stained sex, rushed sex, soundless sex under thick and dirty blankets too small to cover them both. _what happened, and it was you what happened, couldn´t be accurately transmitted in words you and I know, not spoken out loud, unless it´s the consonants and vowels of your name, and not even that, Riza Hawkeye, not even that._

Roy feels childish, writing letters to a girl and never mailing them, and how easy it would be, to catch her, catch her wrist, her elbow, whisper into her ear, and place the paper on her hand, meet her halfway his silence and her quietness and say: _here, this is from me to you; this is ME to you, all the things I was never taught to say at school…_ but instead, damn, instead he writes it down to…

_I wish I could catch you and tell you, catch you, catch you by the wrist, the elbow, meet you halfway…_

Torn paper, bottles of ink knocked over the letters, ruining the letters, losing their meaning, just as it was intended; bottles of black ink knocked over, and Roy wants to rewrite: _look how fragile human language is against the solidity of your back arched against me in the dark _.

Unmailed letters, always hidden in the deepest of his drawer.

xxx

After Ishval they walk around each other with the care of cats, and the same curiosity. A tense waltz, learning to shed their skins of soldiers, murderers, learning to live outside the pitch black nights sleeping with their clothes on, making love with their clothes on, learning to live through scars and with ghosts. And see if love survives.

(in the letters Roy _does_ mail, the letter to Central, the letters to Hughes he tells his friend: _sometimes, very early in the morning, or just after lunch East City is so quiet that it´s almost a ghost city, but I wish there was a better definition, because here everybody is painfully alive_.

then he takes out another piece of paper, and hides there what he can´t tell Hughes –he calls him Maes much more in these silent pages-: _it´s almost a ghost city, but I wish we could find a better definition, because here everybody is painfully alive, and I am the ghost _.

the letters Hughes would never receive –he would look in the mailbox and they wouldn´t be inside- are full of Hawkeye. Roy knows he can´t talk about her to anybody, more than he can discuss her with himself, but sometimes, just sometimes, when Hughes calls and teases him about it, Roy wishes he could sit down and write: _her anxiety circles me these days, just like mine circles her; we don´t know what to do with each other now that there´s no battleground, no bombs, no sand so we can cover the word "love" and forget about it. we don´t know anything here, in East, alone, but I wish I could say for her that she knows that I am glad that we are here, in East, alone, with her_.)

Those first weeks alone in a new city, a new life, a new set of adjectives and nouns, only the verbs remain familiar, laid out before them, like pieces on a chessboard, Roy realizes that maybe they are no more than strangers, perfect strangers that once shared a single bed and thick and dirty blankets.

(those first weeks in a new city, a new life, Roy takes out a new notebook, for writing all the letters he knows he will never send)

They don´t talk about Ishval those days (they don´t talk about much, actually, but some days, when everybody has left the office and it´s just he and Hawkeye and oblicuous sunlight against the furniture, Roy embraces her from behind and puts his lips against the back of her neck, trying to say _i´d love to feel your hair grow _but what really comes out it´s _sorry_ muted against her skin).

They don´t recall Ishval much those days, nobody does, not even the papers, with their shy chants of victory. But one night Roy walks her to her house –for no particular reason, she didn´t ask and he didn´t complied, their path just seemed to lie ahead, together, side by side. And Ishval happens again.

Ishval happens against the door of her flat. Hawkeye tastes of salt from an ocean dried up many centuries ago, turned into dunes. They still carry the soldier´s habit of silence, but Roy has a fleeting desire to make her scream, until he remembers… _there are no words, no words at all… there can´t be…_

xxx

When he wakes up that first morning Roy searches the pocket of his coat for the notebook.

_after these weeks without having sex I fooled myself thinking I had begun to forget the shape of your scars, but I was wrong, I know them by heart_

He studies the possibility of leaving the paper, those words, those wounds exposed and open, on her table. But he hides it again when he hears the little noises she makes when she wakes up.

(he hides the letter again when he hears and _fuck, he has missed those little sounds she makes when she wakes up_)

xxx

"Are you alright?" he asks, not exactly sure why, maybe just because he needs a reason to rub his hand up and down her arm, slowly, like it´s a cold, cold night and he was trying to save her from hypothermia.

Hawkeye stirs under the sheets and nods.

(Roy Mustang has always been suspicious of poetry, he knows no perfect versed line, no perfect rhyme, could be as beautiful as her in this moment, or paint her as she really is)

"Have you written my letter?" she asks, playfully, putting her hand over his hand over her arm.

"What?"

"Last night you told me you were going to write me a letter when you woke up. You said you were very bad at these things."

"Oh," Roy absently admits, too caught up redrawing the soft curve of Hawkeye´s shoulder with his fingertips. He realizes they have never been able to act like this by daylight.

From now on they are not going to fuck like soldiers anymore. Everything shifts in this moment.

"Are you going to write that letter?"

Roy loves her because she knows the answer; because they buried the word "love" a long time ago, under the sand, because it didn´t include their definition.

"No, I won´t."

He is serious, she smiles.

She slides her thumb under the shirt´s cuff, feeling the pulse throbbing, a beating she still feels inside her from last night.

"I don´t think you are that bad at these things."

And it feels good to kiss her with the first light and not with the last one.

xxx

Roy Mustang grew up in a house of empty bookshelves he filled little by little, a house of silences he filled with made-up words, with scribbles on a faded-white paper, sense-less drawing that became fire, that became life-

(-that became death)

xxx

Many years later, he still keeps the letter from that morning, always under all the other letters with all the words he has never said. Always at the bottom of the drawer, but always there.

"Will you ever give it to me?" Hawkeye asks, one of those nights they leave the office late and there´s no witness around and he can walk her home again.

(and he might even kiss her, if no one is around, and it´s not by daylight but at least it´s in the open)

"No, I won´t."

Roy is serious, Hawkeye smiles.

the end


End file.
